Haven’t you always wondered what there was before the Big Bang happened? It might have been that the universe was there forever. Let’s get right into this heated discussion concerning the Big Bang theory.
First of all, we have to know what the Big Bang Theory is. The big bang theory is the widely accepted framework for cosmology that explains the beginning, nature, and evolution of the universe. The theory suggests that the universe was once compressed into a small primordial atom, and between 10 and 20 billion years before, a tremendous explosion caused the universe to begin to expand. All the matter and energy in the wide void were ejected from the primordial atom, in a very short period. As the cosmos cooled down, the elements began to coalesce into stars, and the stars themselves coalesced into galaxies. The universe is thus collectively referred to as these galaxies.
Let’s take a look at the origin of the Big Bang theory. If you go back to the beginnings of the Big Bang theory, you will find that Georges Lemaître a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest, proposed the theory when he proposed that the universe began with a single primordial atom in the 1920s.
The Big Bang Theory received major boosts from two significant scientific findings. One is the discovery by Hubble in the 1920s of a correlation between a galaxy’s distance from Earth and its speed, and the other one is the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960s.
So let’s go further back to the 1920s. With the aid of the largest telescope available at the time, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble was able to redefine our position in the cosmos by the year 1929. He discovered that the farther away a galaxy is from us, the faster it appears to be vanishing into space. This indicates that the universe is expanding consistently in all directions. Penzias and Wilson, two radio astronomers in the United States, made the accidental discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965. The heat left over from the Big Bang is shown by this radiation. Although the CMB is invisible to the human eye, it is present throughout the cosmos. The CMB is the oldest and most distant light that a telescope can find. One of the most promising approaches we now have to comprehend the origin and development of the Universe in which we live is through the CMB, which brings scientists as close to the Big Bang as possible.
What happened before the Big Bang theory? This is something everyone wants to know. Several string theories on the universe’s beginning emerged before the Big Bang theory was put forth. The “ekpyrotic” model is one of the earliest string theories. According to the Ekpyrotic Model of the Universe, our current universe was created by the collision of two three-dimensional worlds in a space with an additional spatial dimension. The original fire gives rise to the existing universe. Cyclic cosmology, which contends that the cosmos experiences never-ending cycles of expansion and cooling, is another extension of the first string theory.
Every string theory that emerged before the Big Bang theory made some sort of case for the primordial atom’s explosion, cooling, and eventual transformation into the cosmos we know today. However, it’s difficult to determine whether there was anything at all if we consider the existence before the Big Bang scenario. We cannot see the conclusion because it is too far away. According to British physicist Stephen Hawking, who detailed what occurred before the existence of our world, there was nothing at all before the Big Bang. In another talk at the Pontifical Academy in 2016, a year and a half before he passed away, Hawking stated that the no-boundary approach says that asking what occurred before the Big Bang is pointless since no concept of time can be used as a reference. We can conclude from this that there was nothing in the universe before the Big Bang.
Writer,
Sheikh Prome Akther
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE.